Tag Archives: Marshmallow Peeps

We talk a lot about pizza around these parts, but can you blame us? Pizza is just about the perfect, when done right. But, as you no doubt know, it’s…not always done right. Now we get a lot of flack from St. Louis and Ohio Valley residents because of our article that (correctly) points out what their regional pizzas are (garbage) but we can at least take solace in knowing that, as a nation, we generally have our shit together. Other countries, though? Not so much. Sure, we’ve previously talked about Pizza Hut’s crazy international menu items, and England’s hot dog crust pizza, but we’ve not really taken the moment to sit down and let you know how badly other countries are screwing up pizza.

And boy howdy, are they screwing up pizzas.

Granted, this article only lists isolated instances—a bad pizza idea from a country other than America does not mean that the country in question does not know how to make at least passable pizza otherwise. But still, when we see pizzas being ruined across the world, it’s our duty, as Americans, to point it out. You know, so we can feel superior, and also so we can say, “Well, sure, we have St. Louis-style pizza, but we’re not monsters.”

A few weeks ago, we talked about marshmallow Peeps. Specifically, the fact that marshmallow Peeps, which exist only to taste like sugar coated with more sugar, with the added benefit of being able to bite the head of a cute inanimate object, puzzlingly comes in a variety of flavors, most of which are horrible. The formula for the Peep is basic—pump enough sweetness into a marshmallow as you can without it technically becoming a hate crime, drop it in some children’s Easter baskets, and laugh as you watch their parents hopefully try to control them. Trying to make Peeps taste like anything else is just showing off.

Well actually, it’d be showing off if they were actually good at picking flavors. Which they are not. So, they’re showing off in the way you’re showing off if you try to do a backflip and land on your fucking neck. Anyway, here are some more mistakes made by the Just Born company, makers of marshmallow Peeps.

There are three kinds of people in America. Children, people who still love Peeps because they remember their childhood fondly, and people who think Peeps are way too sweet for their taste and/or are diabetic and don’t want to fall into another Easter coma. But no matter what category you fall into, it’s important to remember that there is no ego to the marshmallow Peep—if you went up to someone obsessive with Peeps and said, “I think Peeps are gross, the texture is weird and they’re too sweet” they’d probably just shrug and go, “Yeah, I can see that. I like them, though.”

That’s because the question of if you like Peeps or not depends on if you like mainlining sugar into your system until the world starts to vibrate around you, with a secondary question of if you like your world-altering sucrose delivery system to be soft and fluffy, or left out a few days so it’s a bit stale in a weirdly appealing way. Either way, when you think of Peeps, you think of mutilated faux-chickens that all taste the same no matter what color they come in. And you would be wrong.

Strangely, not only are there flavors of Peeps other than “Impossibly Sweet,” there are over a dozen, and just about every single one seems like a horrible idea. Like, a two-article–spanning amount of badness. This is what happens when you mess with perfection, people. Or, like, just try to add weird flavors to things that don’t need any more flavor.

“Listen, kids will drink anything if you just fill it up with sugar. So, can we just do that?”

~Milk Executives

Americans consume an impressive amount of milk on average—over 20 gallons per person, and that includes vegans who live life incorrectly. The dairy industry is one of the largest agricultural groups in the nation, and most Americans grew up having milk crammed down their throats through school lunches and parents telling them to “drink your milk so you can grow up big and strong” or, in the case of AFFotD’s staff, “drink your milk so you can have a good base coat before you switch to whiskey.” And while milk is delicious, many people view it as a healthy beverage, and the average American child would rather chew off his own arm than purposely consume something healthy. And because this is America, and our government is secretly run by sugar lobbyists (don’t believe us? Ask a European if they think our bread tastes sweet) we’ve naturally decided that there is only one way to make sure that kids drink enough milk for their bones to become calcified adamantium.

Apparently we couldn’t really justify just adding a bunch of sugar to regular milk, so that added hyperactivity had to be introduced through various flavors, with varying success. Now, we can all support chocolate milk, and while the taste/potential abject horror of strawberry and banana flavored milk can be easily questioned, they’ve unfortunately been around long enough to be merely “gross” and not “oh my God, what have we done” to the modern American consumer. That doesn’t really forgive us for the sins that we’ve otherwise committed on dairy in our quest to turn milk from “a kind of thick white liquid we squirt from the bottom of a cow” to “candy!” in the minds of America’s youth.

Take solace, Lactose Intolerance sufferers of America. You might miss out on cheese, and yogurt, and pizza, oh God now that we start listing things you can’t have we suddenly feel so bad for you, but you at least don’t have to deal with these.

“If it weren’t for these fluffy fuckers, we’d be bankrupt within a week.”

~Cereal executives

What do you get when you combine gelatin, sugar, water and corn syrup? No, not diabetes. Well…

But no, the answer we are going for is one of the most American dessert/decoration/camping/breakfast/anything candied foods available. That’s right, we’re talking about the ever Vegan-Unfriendly Marshmallow. Marshmallows are a staple candy in American cuisine, seen everywhere from breakfast cereals to candy treats made out of breakfast cereals. And before you can accuse us of overstating both the importance of Marshmallows, as well as their American-ness, consider their role in the creation of S’Mores. Imagine the S’More- the classic American camping treat of two graham crackers and two pieces of chocolate held together with a melted, gooey Marshmallow, without that most key ingredient. Without the shape-forming delicious Marshmallow, a S’More would just be two delicious but uncontained pieces of candy, chaffing against the rough texture of the graham cracker, unable to be held up in a comfortable, shapely way that helps ease future back problems. On a totally unrelated point here’s a picture of Marshmallows being strung together to make a bra.

So without further glances at the above image (even our female readers are a little curious, right? You’re thinking “that looks uncomfortable…but also kind of comfortable…”) let us go into the surprisingly rich history of…